It’s a favourite amongst those who subscribe to holistic and homeopathy remedies, but is oil pulling as beneficial as people say it is?

Probably not, says Dr Peter Alldritt, chairman of the oral committee at the Australian Dental Association – but that doesn’t mean it harms your teeth.

"Oil pulling has become trendy with many health-conscious people of late, but I believe the practice has been around of centuries," Alldritt tells Coach.

"It's claimed that oil pulling draws toxins out of your mouth and body – that's where I begin to get a bit sceptical. The claims need to be treated with open mindedness, but the evidence to support oil-pulling is simply not there."

An ancient Indian practice

While it may sound like oil pulling originated from some incense-filled flat in Bondi, it's actually been around for thousands of years. What we call oil pulling is actually a form of Ayurvedic medicine that dates back as far as 5000 years.

Ayurveda is an Indian-based school of thought that believes much of the body can be cured with disciplines such as aromatherapy, herbal medicine, acupuncture, yoga and meditation. When translated from Sanskrit to English, Ayurveda roughly means "Life-knowledge".

Oil pulling involves taking a tablespoon of oil (most people recommend coconut oil for its proven anti-microbial properties, but the traditional oil used is sesame) and simply swishing it around your mouth for 20 minutes.

If you think that's an agonisingly long time – you'd be right. You can’t speak for the entire time that you're "pulling "oil, and you'd better hope that you don't have a case of the sniffles.

Then when you're done, you'll have to spit it out into the rubbish bin – because coconut oil solidifies at temperatures below 24 degrees Celsius, which means it would clog up your bathroom drains in a little over a week.

But despite all of these apparent drawbacks, the people who practice it seem to love it.

It takes a whole lot more to whiten your teeth

When it comes to whitening your teeth, everybody has a special remedy. Some people make up a baking soda and lemon juice paste, others rub petroleum jelly all over their chompers, and some even rub the peel of their bananas all over their teeth.

But according to Alldritt, all of these methods are relatively futile because in his experience, it's way harder than you might imagine to bleach your teeth white.

"One of the claims is that oil pulling whitens your teeth, but from my experience – after years working with teeth – the best way to whiten teeth is bleaching with hydrogen peroxide," says Alldritt.

"And that can take hours and hours of treatment to do."

It (probably) has little to no negative effects

It's important to remember that, when you're weighing up the plausibility of natural health remedies, you keep an eye out for those that claim to "cleanse" or "detox" your body from "harmful toxins".

Because what they never seem to tell you is the name of these toxins, or the quantity of which are removed – and as we’ve covered on Coach before, it’s pretty much impossible to live an existence that's chemical-free.

Thankfully there's been some (extremely small) pilot studies that have investigated whether oil pulling is beneficial as its proponents claim.

A study in 2008 by Indian researchers found that oil pulling, when compared to traditional mouthwash, seemed to remove roughly the same amount of bacteria from your mouth. The only catch? The study involved 20 adolescent boys, and all of them brushed regularly anyway.

Based on that, and a few more theoretical studies, Alldritt says it isn’t possible to give people the green light on oil pulling just yet.

"It's unacceptable for a medical professional to recommend a practice that isn't evidence based, so I would not recommend oil pulling. It simply needs a lot more research to prove the claims that people make," explains Alldritt.

"That being said, I can’t also see it having any negative consequences on the health of your teeth."

"The oil isn’t acidic, and as long as the process doesn’t cause any harm (to your teeth or elsewhere in your body) then my hat is off to you if you can pull oil for 20 minutes"

Here's a better way to spend 20 minutes

If you're interested in trying oil pulling, and can spare the 20 minutes to do it, then all the more power to you. But for the rest of us who struggle to find enough time to pull on underwear let alone swish oil, there's good news for you – you can have perfect teeth in just nine minutes a day.

"The irony is that people are spending 20 minutes a day pulling oil, when we have evidence-based practices that are known to reduce tooth decay and gum disease," says Alldritt.

"I would recommend you brushing your teeth twice a day for two minutes at a time, and flossing your teeth once a day – let's say for about five minutes (and that would be a very thorough floss)."

"That amounts to about nine minutes of teeth care, and I'm being generous with that estimate, over the course of your day which has been proven in research to improve the health of your teeth."

"You now effectively have 11 minutes to spare, compared to if you were oil pulling, to spend however you like."